Ice Cube, Trump Follies, Pandering Clerics, Future Inglewood

SNAPSHOTS: Jarrette Fellows, Jr. with a quick run down of issues bearing a second look

The ongoing “Trump Follies Under the Big Top.” The Trump presidency up to now has been a reality show — pure comedic theater, to say the least, right in there with “The Housewives of Atlanta.”
But on a more serious note, however, we have a problem. A moron is driving the train. If 45 could make it to the top of the political spectrum, I shudder to think: Who else of shallow character, moral and ethical deviance could be next?
America needs a system of checks and balances to prevent the rise of someone psychologically, emotionally, and mentally unfit from becoming POTUS ever again. At the very least, the president must have a basic understanding of the US Constitution and how the Executive Branch of government works. There should be a mandatory Basic IQ Test of such before an individual is certified to run for the most powerful office on Earth.
The pathetic excuse this week by House Speaker Paul Ryan that Trump has no governmental experience (and therefore commits bungling mistake after bungling mistake), is ridiculous. America and the world cannot afford a POTUS on a learning curve, much less one clearly bearing intellectual deficiencies.Donald Trump and the shamelessly “Pandering Clerics.” Talking about James Dobson, Tony Evans, James Roberson, Franklin Graham, et al. Despite what conservatives believe, Republicanism and conservatism do not equate to Godliness: Case in point, the Ku Klux Klan, which historically stood on the Bible while placing a noose around the necks of untold numbers of Black men, women, and children.
Dobson, the popular founder and host of the daily program, Focus On the Family, and fellow Republican clergymen Evans, Roberson, and Graham attempted to sanitize Trump, at a GOP rally, recently, calling him “born again” and a “baby Christian” to justify their support of him.
I suppose if the devil were Republican running for POTUS, they’d embrace him, too. Maybe they have!
After the meeting between Trump and the evangelicals, one unconvinced guest, noting the candidate spoke during the meeting about “religion” — but not “faith, belief, prayer, the Bible, and Jesus Christ,” prompted this apology from Dobson:
Trump “…doesn’t know our language. You gotta cut him some slack. He didn’t grow up like we did.”
If that’s not blowing smoke in Trump’s ear, what is? Other Christians responded on social media to the news of Trump’s reported Jesus moment with somewhat less enthusiasm.
Popular Christian author and blogger Rachel Held Evans put it bluntly in a tweet: “Oh give me a break. Donald Trump hasn’t been born again. The Religious Right has simply sold out.”
And in a blog post about Dobson’s statement, John Fea, chair of the history department at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., called Trump’s meeting with evangelicals “the theo-political equivalent of money laundering.”
I’m sure some of the evangelicals — if not all — repented of their shameless pandering as fast as they could get to their prayer closets.
Furthermore, all of the hypocrites claiming to be Christians and heaven-bound, yet stubbornly cling to bigotry,the sin detector at heaven’s gate is going to clang with such ferocity at your arrival, you will be repulsed and streak to hell as a bolt of lightning. That’s not speculation. That’s Word! “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” Luke 10:18, King James Bible.Actor/rapper Ice Cube’s guest appearance on “Real Time” with Bill Maher this week discussing Maher’s use of the N-word in a recent segment: Cube does not speak for Black America. What the hell does Cube mean when he says the verbal “knife” is “ours now”? This is nonsensical. Does he mean Black Americans can now mutilate ourselves with it, as opposed to Whites stabbing us with this knife or shooting us with this “verbal bullet?” The epithet is a damn weapon, whether used by Whites or any other ethnic group or by Black Americans. It is not and never will be a term of endearment.
No other race uses defamation for self-actualization. Blacks who speak the utterance have simply internalized the hatred of bigots toward us and infused it in the psyche much the same way addicts infuse their physical bodies with debilitating drugs. To users, the racial slur — and that’s exactly what it still is in 2017— is an “addiction.” Most of you know this. Be courageous. Stand against this self-induced poison. Bury it!Lessons: Before tens of thousands of Black men, women, and children died at the end of a rope during lynching, the last word many heard was, ‘ni-ger’
Africa-Americans who willfully and casually refer to themselves as “ni-gers,” or “ni-gas” are addicted and infused with a curse. The curse has been passed down through generations from race bigots. Consequently, countless African-Americans are unable to refrain from continually stabbing themselves with this verbal knife! To impale oneself over and over ad infinitum is not endearment — it’s psychological and mental fratricide!
Thus, the lynching continues.
Think about it; the last word tens of thousands of Black men, women, and children heard while suspended from a tree as the hangman’s noose tightened around their neck before they died from a lack of oxygen or a broken neck — was “ni-ger!” Think about it!
The Truth Shall Set You Free!The City of Inglewood, Calif. is about to displace thousands to usher in gentrification waiting at the gate: The handwriting is on the wall and it isn’t graffiti! The Forum, $1.86 billion NFL futuristic Rams football stadium, and the Hollywood Park Tomorrow Mixed Use Development in store for Inglewood isn’t for the festering criminal element currently entrenched there.
To steal a line from the Hollywood film, “Field of Dreams” — “Build it and they will come” — specifically affluent White people riding a wave of gentrification. That’s what’s going to happen in Inglewood, except, the deep pockets who initially fled amid “White Flight” in the 60s and 70s, cannot return until the current element is fully dislodged to make way for them.
Property owners are already displacing working class tenants who occupy their rental properties, refusing to extend leases and increasing rent by the hundreds of dollars forcing people out, the majority of whom are Black and Latino.
This isn’t speculation — Mayor James Butts knows it, the city council knows it, the City Planning Commission knows it, billionaire Rams owner Stanley Kroenke knows it, the Madison Square Garden Company knows it, and the Hollywood Park Land Company knows it.
The only people who don’t know, are the ones who are going to be blindsided — displaced with nowhere to go. Perhaps that’s the plan — herd Blacks and Browns to places like San Bernardino, Moreno Valley, Lancaster, and Palmdale — the new zones of crime and violence.
Following a $50 million renovation of The Forum by the Madison Square Garden Company, restoring the luster and profitability of the original venue to its glory days as the Great Western Forum and home of the Los Angeles Lakers, you knew something of grand proportion was afoot in Inglewood.
The present Hollywood Park Tomorrow Mixed Use redevelopment of the approximately 238-acre project site, including 2,995 homes (starting at $750,000), 620,000 square feet of retail space, 75,000 square feet of office/commercial space, 10,000 square feet of community serving uses, a 25-acre park featuring a lake and waterfall, and a 300-room hotel — should convince anyone of Inglewood’s ambitions if they had lingering doubts.
“We are not aspiring to create Rodeo Drive,” Chris Meany, development manager for the Hollywood Park Land Co., told a local newspaper in January. “We’re responding to create a place that is young and contemporary. The retailers are the kind you’d see at The Grove.”Gentrification. It happened in San Francisco, Brooklyn, Pasadena … it’s happening in Oakland and downtown Los Angeles … and now, Inglewood. And that, folks, is what’s driving the price of real estate through the stratosphere in Inglewood, which will amply restore the City to its long-held nickname, “Jewel of the South Bay.”
As you can see, “Future Inglewood ” is going to be a place for people of means and affluence.Consider: In the grand scheme of things in an infinite universe, human beings in our tiny speck called Earth really are the same, after all. Any intelligent life beyond Earth, the solar system, the Milky Way, would be different. The otherworldly sentient life looking upon us would behold body mass bearing appendages and an anterior portion of the mass. Disregarding color as a differentiating factor, observing only identical creatures, they’d probably ask: “Why do they squabble?”Lastly, Mayor Aja Brown easily won re-election in the City of Compton. The usual claims of electoral malfeasance have erupted, but as in past campaigns this “fizz” about nothing too shall pass.Jarrette Fellows, Jr. is the publisher and editor of the Compton Herald.
Photo: “Watching TV” by Flickr/Al Ibrahim